ABSTRACT
The Arab Republic of Egypt occupies the northeastern corner of the African continent and the Sinai Peninsula. It has an area of about 390,540 square miles (1,011,500 km2) including the 23,440 square miles (60,710 km2) of the Sinai. Ninety-nine per cent of the Egyptian population lives on only 4.0 per cent of the land. Most of them are in the Nile River valley and the large, fertile delta of the river. Egypt is bordered in the south by the Republic of Sudan and in the west by Libya. Towards the north lies the Mediterranean Sea and on the eastern coast are the Red Sea, and the Gulf of Aqaba, between Sinai and Saudi Arabia. The Gulf of Suez and the Suez Canal separate African Egypt from Sinai. In Northern Sinai, Egypt's border with Israel was fixed in 1979 by a peace treaty, though the disputed territory did not return to Egypt until 1982 ( Compton's Interactive Encyclopaedia 1995). The estimated population of Egypt was over 60 million in 1995 and ranks 18th in the world (Van der Heiden 1996).
